


Incunabula

by ncfan



Series: Textual Ghosts [34]
Category: Long Live the Queen (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Game, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 00:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3431153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No magic could be wrought without incurring a price, whether it be to light a candle without a match or to summon calamities great enough to drive back entire armies. [Plot-relevant spoilers for versions 1.3.13 and above.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incunabula

**Author's Note:**

> So this oneshot contains spoilers for Long Live the Queen, versions 1.3.13 and above (the current patch is version). Namely, this oneshot contains a major spoiler for a new achievement and ending in the updated patch. Unless you've gotten the most recent update to LLTQ and have gotten that achievement, I would honestly advise not reading this. It's mostly just dealing with the canonical fall-out of getting this achievement, but still.

No magic could be wrought without incurring a price, whether it be to light a candle without a match or to summon calamities great enough to drive back entire armies. So Joslyn's mother had told him when he was a child, and her lessons were ones that he was unlikely ever to forget.

As he grew older, Joslyn saw nothing to conflict with what he had been taught about Lumens and their magic. Monsters emerged from the Old Forest and attacked the denizens of Caloris, and there was no force of arms great enough to slay them—they would only withdraw to the dark eaves of the forest once their thirst for blood had been slaked. Fidelia summoned storms to drive the Tombulans back over the border into their own country, and the strain cost her her life. Elodie summoned an earthquake to destroy the invading Shanjian army, and the result was… Well…

No magic came without a price. The greater the magic, the dearer the price.

The coastline of Caloris had been severely altered by the earthquake. The ducal seat still stood, though the city walls were all but gone and many of the peasants had been left homeless, their ramshackle cottages collapsed by the tremors. The fishing villages in the marshlands were not so lucky. The sea now inundated the marshlands, and no one knew what had become of the people who lived there. Perhaps they had drowned.

Given the most recent reports concerning the Old Forest, perhaps not.

Joslyn was forced to return to Caloris as soon as Elodie was crowned. There was no helping it, no avoiding it; the people of Caloris would accept nothing else. Joslyn was not the only person in Caloris who had been raised to distrust magic, and though it angered him, he found that they did not trust their Lumen Queen.

(Though when he finally saw the devastation with his own eyes, Joslyn felt more than a little anger himself. Elodie was his daughter. He loved her dearly; nothing would ever change that. But this was what her magic had wrought—the destruction of towns and villages, the deaths of hundreds, and the disappearance of many more as the fell creatures who slept in the depths of the Old Forest awoke.

Down through the years, he could hear Eleonora murmur: _This is what magic does, my son. This is what magic always does._ )

It was simple enough to begin rebuilding the towns and villages devastated by the earthquake and dispatch aid to those who could not rebuild without help. Earthquakes were not a common occurrence in Nova (which had likely only exacerbated the anger of the peasants who had marched on the capital the day of Elodie's coronation), but they were not unheard-of, and there was documentation on how they had been dealt with. It would take time, and they would not survive unchanged, but Caloris would survive the earthquake.

The Old Forest was another matter entirely. For as long as he could remember, Joslyn had heard reports of monsters periodically leaving the cursed forest and roaming the countryside. The keythong, pet of the last Novan Queen to rule by Kathre Lake, had left the forest three times in Joslyn's lifetime, always soon after the death of Nova's current ruler.

Usually, it was a slow trickle of creatures in and out of the Old Forest. Only one or two would roam loose at a time, as if to remind the people of the consequences of a Lumen's magic (As if anyone needed to be reminded). However, the massive amount of magic necessary to trigger an earthquake had triggered something else. The Old Forest was virtually emptied of all its fell creatures. The keythong, the wights, the chimeras and manticores and everything else that had ever dwelt beneath those dark eaves now ran amok across Caloris, as well as some portions of northern Maree and western Merva. None showed any sign of having its fill of blood. The only good to come of this, it seemed, was that the survivors of the Shanjian army had been the first to fall prey to the denizens of the Old Forest.

The Old Forest was not the only place in Caloris beginning to yield up monsters. Though Caloris had been hostile to magic for two hundred years, the land itself was soaked with magic and lore, echoing in the waters and the rocks and the trees. There were reports of glashtyns coming to the surviving coastal villages and trying to drag young women into the sea. Myverns crawled out from under green hills topped with yellow flowers, devouring farmers' crops. There was allegedly now a hydra living in a swamp in the northeast of the duchy.

 _I begin to wonder if any of us will even be able to live here by year's end,_ Joslyn thought exasperatedly as he finished reading the latest report. _We might have to flee the entire duchy; isn't that a pretty picture?_

On second thought, that was not an acceptable course of action. Joslyn's family had held Caloris for six hundred years, their line unbroken. Not even the doomshadow had been enough to drive the Duke of Caloris from his home, though he might have sent his heirs to safety. Joslyn would not be driven from his home, not over this.

Not for the first time, he wished Fidelia was still alive. There were many reasons why Joslyn had wished for that over the last year, not least of which was that, after spending half of his life standing at her side, standing alone was virtually the same as being cast into the choppy sea without a net. Lately, however, it had more to do with the fact that if Fidelia was still alive, Shanjia likely wouldn't have tried to invade in the first place. It didn't take a tactician or a scholar to see that Shanjia had seen Nova, ruled by a child, as a vulnerable domain ripe for invasion.

But that could not be.

At present, it was high time to see which of these beasts could be killed and which could at least be driven back to their lairs, and if so, how.

-0-0-0-

"My Lord? These are the last of the books from the temple."

"Ah, thank you. Just put them over there."

Joslyn supposed he had his grandfather to thank for the number of books touching upon supernatural beasts and monsters in Caloris's library. Caloris was much-involved with lore already, but Duke Edmund, when he wasn't at sea terrorizing pirates, was forever trying to get as much information as he could on the kinds of creatures that lurked in the Old Forest and elsewhere in the wilds of Caloris. Apparently he was planning to one day storm the old palace by Kathre Lake.

Joslyn never met his maternal grandfather; Edmund had died before he was born. Whenever Eleonora spoke of him, she did it with a look of chagrin and ended with a muttered, _"But I don't like to talk about him very much."_ Apparently, Eleonora hadn't gotten on very well with her father—that or she just didn't approve of him at all. She had spent much of her time between attaining her majority and Duke Edmund's death at King Fulbert's court or in Elath with her mother's people.

Whatever his mother had thought of her father, Joslyn was grateful for the number of bestiaries his grandfather had collected. There was a wealth of information contained therein on the animals of the Old Forest.

However, not all of it was useful. Much of what the books had to say was said about dragons, a dragon being a creature that dwelled primarily in Australis. There hadn't been a dragon sighting in Nova in over four hundred years (and Joslyn like to think he would know if there was one in Caloris now!); there hadn't been a dragon in Nova even when the Lumen rulers were gathering magical creatures for experimentation. There was also a great deal to be said about the sphinx—a creature that had _never_ been sighted within Nova's bounds, and was not particularly violent at that.

The same topics tended to repeat themselves. There was a great deal of information about the keythong, and much to be said about the doomshadow (Information that was completely useless and would hopefully _remain_ completely useless). There was a reasonable amount of information about chimeras and changelings. However, there was little to nothing in Caloris's library about the glashtyns or the hydra, nor the manticore or the myvern.

There was also nothing in Caloris's library about whether the damaging effects of magic could be _reversed_ , rather than simply waited out. Joslyn had long believed that there was nothing to do but wait; that was what he had always been taught. But if he tried to wait the crisis out now, he feared that there would be nothing left of Caloris by the time things died down.

He did not seek the aid of outsiders. Caloris had forever dealt with these matters privately; now would be no different. Bringing in outsiders, especially from the capital, could potentially unearth secrets Joslyn would rather remained buried. He enlisted the aid of the local temple instead. The temple's archives ran deep, and though there were some documents they could not share, there were plenty that they could.

Joslyn's eyebrows shot up when the novitiate who had brought the books from the temple sat down across from him at the table. "Do you lack transportation?" he asked her.

The novitiate, Amata, shook her head. "I was instructed to aid you in any way that I could."

More likely she had been instructed to make sure that all of the temple's books were returned to their rightful place when he was done with them. Joslyn could vividly remember the temple sending one of its novitiates to hover over his mother whenever she requested a book or scroll from them. Even the borrowing of an almanac prompted such a response. Eleonora had usually put the novitiate to work helping her anyways.

"Then take note of anything that could be useful—especially anything that might speak of a way to subdue the creatures running loose."

Joslyn had been perhaps a little taken aback when the face of the novitiate was one whom he recognized. The priesthood was usually not the province of the nobility, at least not in Nova. The priests and druids and other mystics were practically their own class, neither noble nor common, and unless when they were on some urgent errand they didn't mingle much with the nobility. However, the minor nobility did enter the priesthood from time to time.

Amata was the daughter of one of the earls in Caloris, the third and youngest, if Joslyn remembered correctly. They had met briefly just after Joslyn's mother died eight years ago. Earl Gereon had brought his family with him to the ducal seat to swear fealty. At sixteen, Amata looked much like her father, black-haired and gray-eyed and pale-skinned, and had said very little, just a "Hello" and a "Farewell"—very quiet in comparison to her more gregarious sisters. She hadn't changed much in the intervening years. Her hair was longer, maybe.

At present, Amata took vellum and a stylus out of her satchel, followed by a small, earthenware pot of ink. She began reading through one of the books she had brought from the temple, mouthing words on occasion, while Joslyn finally finished up with the last of the books from his own library. No new information, nothing new to write down. He spared a glance at her before moving on to the books she had brought with her. He blinked. She was left-handed.

-0-0-0-

"I'd not heard that you were planning to join the priesthood."

They'd been reading, peering at the texts and occasionally jotting down notes for nearly two hours without a word passed between them. Joslyn was used to working in silence, but even he was unused to working with another for so long without speaking. Eleonora asked if he was having trouble finding information. Laurent asked him if he'd found anything for the essay they needed to write. Fidelia would want to know if he had found anything useful in the law codices, or the Annals. He wasn't used to working with someone who said nothing at all.

Amata's head snapped up, and Joslyn realized with some embarrassment that she had been so engrossed in her reading that she may as well have forgotten he was there. He considered repeating himself, but her eyes cleared and she set her quill down. The side of her hand was stained black with ink.

"I made the decision a few months ago," she said quietly. "There was not… much else."

"Ah."

If Joslyn remembered correctly, Gereon and his wife had but one title between them. The eldest daughter would inherit, but for the younger two it was either marriage or depending on their relations to house them. Joslyn knew few who were comfortable living on the charity of others. If a landless noble did not wish to marry into security, they would have to find another path.

"It was not your first choice, then." Joslyn had no idea why he was asking her that question (Couched in a statement as it might have been). He didn't like to pry into others' lives, didn't want to know any more about the trouble that plagued their houses than he absolutely had to. It must have been the silence getting to him.

Amata offered a weak smile. "Well, with my temperament it seemed the most practical thing to do." She laughed, a high-pitched, nervous laugh. "And I suppose we've all had to make choices like that at least once."

"Perhaps, but the decision isn't usually so…" Joslyn rooted around in his mind for an appropriate word and finally settled on "…permanent."

She shrugged her shoulders slightly. "And yet, here I am."

-0-0-0-

In the evening, a temple guard showed up to escort Amata back to the temple; she would return the following morning, barely say a word to anyone besides a "Hello" or a "Good morning" and delve right back into her reading.

The pattern persisted over the next few weeks—the books were thick and no one could afford to read through them lightly. Joslyn found his attentions being increasingly engaged elsewhere, with rebuilding or pacifying the commoners or sometimes just the typical administrative duties. He could only spend an hour or two in the library each day, and by the time he _found_ time to return to the library, he was so exasperated with the slow rate of repairs and the constant bickering that went into what was to be repaired when and how that he was extremely grateful for the company of someone who wasn't trying to get him to do three things at once.

"Have you found anything?"

"Not much, I'm afraid. I have found some bits and pieces, a few riddles about the keythong, but nothing otherwise."

"Show them to me."

The sun was setting over the western sea, staining the waters red. The bloody appearance of the ocean served nothing but to remind Joslyn of what would have been if an even worse calamity had come to pass. That no kraken had risen from the waters was cold comfort, however; the trouble on land was equal to any trouble the kraken could create in the water.

Amata took a small stack of papers from the table and handed them to Joslyn, who sighed heavily as he slid into the chair opposite hers. He looked over the papers tiredly, wondering if there would be anything useful in them.

There was quoted a passage on the glashtyn's well-known vulnerability to sunlight and the crowing of the rooster. There was a passage about the hydra; if one head was cut off more would sprout from the stump, but if the stump could be burned before the new heads could sprout, it was possible to kill the hydra that way.

There will two riddles about the keythong. The first was as follows:

' _Gold is Queen Cybele's bane_  
And all who stand before it must flee or die  
But when gold boils and tarnishes black  
Queen Cybele's bane will rule no more.'

The second went thusly:

' _What pain does a mother know?_  
What pain to lose her young?  
What pain to lose those who birthed her?  
For what does the keythong look?  
For peace or for vengeance?  
For life or for death?  
When this question you can answer  
When you can put before the keythong what it seeks  
Then shall it go to its eternal rest  
Searching no more.'

Joslyn was already familiar with the glashtyn's weaknesses. Indeed, he did not think that anyone who lived near the water in Caloris could go without hearing stories of the glashtyn—what it was, what it did, and how to stave off its attacks. Amata was not from the coast—her father's county bordered Merva—and that likely explained why she had not known that the knowledge would still be known if it went unspoken (Though he supposed she could just be trying to be thorough). With no word on how to actually kill a glashtyn instead of merely inconveniencing it, this wouldn't help much.

The information on the hydra was interesting, though. However, the idea of burning the stumps of its many necks provided its own difficulties. Even if one head was cut off, there would still be the rest to worry about as someone went in to burn the stump. There was also the fact that the hydra's breath and blood were both highly poisonous. And the hydra was supposed to be massive—the reports had put it at being at least fifty feet long, not counting the length of its many necks. What fire source was there that was large enough to do what needed to be done and wouldn't pose a risk to the people trying to burn the hydra?

As for the riddles, Joslyn had already been familiar with the second, though not the first. He had never been particularly interested in riddles, though his interests might lie with history and lore. Eleonora had required him to know many of the traditional riddles, but had despaired of ever teaching him to interpret them (Though admittedly, she had not known the meaning of the second riddle concerning the keythong either). Fidelia had thought his deficiency with riddles rather amusing; she used to laugh gently when they were assigned riddles in literature class and Joslyn pored over them in frustration.

He would leave the riddles alone for now, for either wiser eyes to look at or for a day when he was not nearing wit's end already to try to make sense of them. For now, Joslyn would start with the information on how to kill the hydra. That was straightforward enough, at least.

"Thank you, Amata," Joslyn said tiredly, bringing a hand to his forehead before remembering himself and taking his hand away.

"Of course," she murmured. Amata peered at him out of her lowered eyes. "My Lord, if I may," she said hesitantly, "I hadn't expected to deal with you personally throughout all of this. I was curious as to why you'd not delegated this task to others."

Joslyn stared at her for a long moment; Amata fidgeted uncomfortably under his gaze. "I… doubt that you are the first to ask these questions. I know it must seem strange to you. However…" He struggled for words, remembering as he did so other times when this land, not just Caloris, had been in a state of crisis, and he had been unable to do anything at all. "…I've stood by long enough. I won't stand by any longer."

It felt like expiation, to tell her this. He had no idea why.

Amata tilted her head slightly to one side, her straight black hair falling over her face. "Are you worried?"

He stared at her incredulously. "Of course I am. I can see no reason why I wouldn't be."

To his surprise, Amata smiled softly at him. "Well, if it is on any consolation to you, know that I will be here for as long as you need me."

Joslyn found that he believed her.


End file.
